Pastor's Message - April 2025

~ Calmly Plotting the Resurrection ~

“Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over…and crucified, and on the third day rise again?”

~Luke 24:6-7

Dear Members and Friends,

            Happy Easter to you!  And before that, a meaningful Holy Week.  Here’s a much-loved anecdote that I used in my Ash Wednesday sermon at the start of Lent:

In the final October of his wife’s life, E.B. White watched as Katharine planned the planting of spring bulbs in her beloved garden at her summer home in Maine, where she had gone to die.  White says this about his beloved wife: “Armed with a diagram and a clipboard, Katharine would get into a shabby old raincoat much too long for her, put on a little round wool hat, pull on a pair of overshoes and proceed to the director’s chair – a folding canvas thing – that had been placed for her at the edge of the [garden] plot. There she would sit, hour after hour, in the wind and the weather, while [the gardener] produced dozens of brown paper packages of new bulbs and a basketful of old ones, ready for the intricate interment”  In that final autumn, “There was something comical yet touching in her bedraggled appearance, the small hunched-over figure, her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there would be yet another spring, oblivious to the ending of her own days, which she knew perfectly well was near at hand, sitting there with her detailed chart under those dark skies in dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection.”  Robert Raines said, “Katharine was a member of the resurrection conspiracy, the company of those who plant seeds of hope under dark skies of grief or oppression, going about their living and dying until, no one knows how, when or where, the tender Easter shoots appear, and a piece of creation is healed.”

UPCOMING LENTEN & EASTER EVENTS

Join us in observing the holiest season of the Christian year:

5th Sunday in Lent, April 6, 6pm, our Sunday evening Lenten observances conclude 

with a hotdog cookout around a fire in the playground, followed by an interview 

with elder Art Thomas about his faith journey.  

Palm Sunday, April 13, 9:30am, we celebrate Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem,

then move to the stirring account of his passion and death.  

Maundy Thursday, April 17: 7pm, we gather around tables in fellowship hall 

to reenact another Thursday night on which Jesus was betrayed.  

Good Friday, April 18: 7pm, a “Tenebrae service,” or “service of darkness” retells the 

crucifixion with a special guest cellist.  This is our first Tenebrae service!

Holy Saturday, April 19: The church is open for private prayers from 11:00am 

to 3:00pm.  Please use the handicap entrance.  

Easter Day, April 20: 8:30am, a free breakfast in fellowship hall at 8:30, followed by

            a joyful celebration of new life and Easter with communion service at 9:30.

Easter Blessings to You,

~Brian